Types syntaxiques et types sémantiques : la phrase copulative comme palimpseste

Nous étudions les phrases copules comme (1) et (2).Nous essayons de faire la synthèse entre l’analyse syntaxique de Moro (1990) selon laquelle le sujet de (1b) et de (2b) en structure-s correspond à un prédicat en structure-d et l’hypothèse sémantique de Partee (1987) selon laquelle le type syntaxtique NP correspond à trois types sémantiques distincts : le Nom, le Prédicat et le Quantificateur généralisé.Nous proposons qu’un NP qui monte à la position sujet en structure-s à partir de la position prédicat en structure-d est interprété comme prédicat en syntaxe et comme quantificateur en FL. La double interprétation d’un seul constituant syntaxique nous amène à comparer des phrases copulatives comme (1b) et (2b) à un palimpseste, où un texte s’écrit par-dessus un autre.Nous proposons que les règles qui interprètent un prédicatif NP dans sa position en structure-d sont du niveau du récit tandis que celles qui l’interprètent dans sa position en structure-s sont d’un niveau linguistique distinct, que nous appelons le commentaire.We discuss pairs of copula sentences like (1) and (2).We propose a synthesis of the syntactic analysis of Moro (1990), according to which the s-structure subject of (1b) and (2b) corresponds to a d-structure predicate, and the semantic hypothesis of Partee (1987), according to which the syntactic type NP corresponds to three different semantic types, a name, a predicate, and a generalised quantifier.We argue that an NP raised from a predicate position in d-structure to the subject position in s-structure is construed as a predicate in syntax and as a quantifier in LF. This double reading leads us to treat a S like (1b) or (2b) as a palimpsest, in which one text is written on top of another. We propose that the rules which interpret the raised predicative NP in its d-structure position belong to the level of the recit while those which interpret it in its s-structure position belong to a distinct linguistic level which we call the commentaire

Introduction

The relationship between syntax and semantics has become a rich and fruitful topic of study over the last several decades. It is easy to see why: an adherence to principles in both of these domains at the same time constrains theories more than adherence to principles in only one domain. In this way, both syntactic and semantic theories benefit from work that is conducted at their interface. This is nowhere more true than in the study of aspect. Syntactic theory on aspect certainly benefits f..

Françoise Dubois-Charlier et la Grammaire Générative

Cet article constitue un bref aperçu du parcours de Françoise Dubois-Charlier, resituant ses travaux dans leur contexte historique, depuis ses débuts en psycholinguistique jusqu’aux dictionnaires électroniques (Les verbes français), en passant bien sûr et avant tout par la grammaire générative et transformationnelle, la sémantique générative, les structuralisme, mais aussi la linguistique de corpus.This paper provides an overview of Françoise Dubois-Charlier’s career, placing her works in their historical context, from her early career in psycholinguistics to her latest works on electronic dictionaries (Les verbes français in this paper), including of course and above all generative and transformational grammar, generative semantics, structuralism, but also corpus linguistics

THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF THE PERFECT STRUCTURE: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

The article covers some issues that concern the syntax and semantics of the present perfect construction in English and other languages. It states that all Present Perfects may be associated with what is considered the canonical construal in which an assertion is located at the present time but reports the existence of a past situation. However, some Present Perfects may, in addition, have a simple past aorist meaning. The author focuses on pluractional and evidential construals of the Present Perfect in some languages, argue that the Passé Composé construal and the Aorist construal of the perfect construction belong to two different modes of discourse, discours and récit, underlines their variability associated with a complex syntactic structure (an auxiliary verb and a verbal participle for Present Perfect, while the Aorist construal is associated with a simple verbal structure). According to the author, the Perfect has both syntactic and analytical ways of realization, thus the analytical syntactic structure of the Perfect is in English, French and German, with both a tensed auxiliary verb and a past participle, whereas it is synthetic in Latin, Russian and Arabic as is presented in the past participle alone; in languages with overt aspectual marking, aspect may vary on either the auxiliary, if it exists, or on the participle

Time and Modality

296 pagesInternational audienceno abstrac

Non-culminating accomplishments: Subject, speaker and syntactic structure

This study aims to establish a relationship between the morphosyntax, the lexicon and conceptual patterns involved in the phenomenon of (non-)culmination. It is proposed that in the case of non-culminating accomplishments, the interaction between the syntax and the lexicon triggers a specific conceptual configuration which represents a goal-directed trajectory initiated by an intentional subject targeting the change-of-state of an object. The same configuration can also be viewed in a reverse order, going from the observation of a change of state to attributing a cause to this change. We propose that non-culminating accomplishments are palimpsestic structures that involve two points of view simultaneously: the prospective goal-directed perspective of the intentional subject and the retrospective perspective of the speaker